From Wherever You Find It
by randomphoenixramblings
Summary: 'I was a pathetic fool, Granger.' He read the words - the proof of his self-betrayal blaring at him in one of the most honest statements he had ever written - and almost tore the page right from his near-empty journal.
1. Prologue

_The second I thought that I had it all,_  
><em>You were the first one to tell me I'm wrong.<em>  
>x<span>Regrets and Romance<span> by From First to Last

It dawned on me today that I have loved you from the very beginning. I hated you, and I loved you, and I—I think I wanted to be you. You, who never wavered in your convictions, never sought to run away, never failed to recognize your mistakes and correct them. I wanted your eyes and their rose-colored view of the universe. I hated that I would never feel joy, or love, or hurt the way you did – none of those emotions would ever be real for me. I was an empty husk of breath and blood, while you were life, personified. Whenever I caught sight of you, I was assaulted with the nauseating suspicion that I was missing something that I never had to begin with.

I envied most of all that you were always surrounded by people who loved you, who laughed and cried and fought with you. There were days when I couldn't stand to look at you because your god-damned purity was shoving itself down my already-constricted throat, choking me until the distinctive burning in my stomach propelled me to find a way to set fire to your picture-perfect fairy tale. I would provoke you, call you tainted, _dirty_, and, by the gods, I was aching for every word to be true, even when I knew it was I who deserved my own derogatory insults. I was the filthy one. Weak, unloved, unwanted.

I was such a hypocritical fucking masochist, because I hated seeing _them_ come to your rescue, poised to kill at your command, yet I stubbornly stayed in-character, proclaiming disgust while secretly wishing to be someone you would trust to protect you, to save you. I was delusional in my frantic desire not just to be near you but to be a part of you - for my life to tangle itself hopelessly with yours as theirs so obviously had. Pathetic, really. I wanted so badly to be your hero, but I didn't see it then, so I settled for the role of the cliched villain. I punched where it hurt, stabbed at every available weakness, seeking - but never quite succeeding - to break the chains that bound the Trio together.

Sometimes, I wonder how we could have drawn our ridiculous tug-of-war game out for so long. Seven years—Even now, I still wish I hadn't been such a coward. Maybe then we wouldn't be so anxious to cram a lifetime's worth of memories into these rushing weeks. I was so blinded by the idea of sticking to our predecessor's flawed, twisted ideals that I missed the chance to break the cycle. I take comfort in the thought that I was not alone in committing that unforgivable sin. Even your perfect sentinels were guilty of the same transgression. Potter and Weasley and I – we were all born to fight the battles of our respective parents. None of us broke the mold. We fell right into our pre-made destinies and did exactly what was expected of us. Fate, Granger. She's a difficult mistress to shake.

But you.. Gods, would that you had never received that letter so many years ago. You never should have boarded that train. You were safe in your innocence. They had no right to pull you into a world that, even then, was beginning to crumble. Sometimes, I close my eyes and imagine who you would be if you hadn't been indoctrinated into this secret existence. A doctor, perhaps. Not a dentist like your parents, no. A lawyer. A leader. A voice for the weak and for the oppressed. I walk with the imagined-you for miles and miles. I listen to her speeches and applaud her victories. And sometimes.. Sometimes, I think of introducing myself to that Hermione. We'd sit at a café – you'd drink from a plain, white mug, while I leave mine untouched – and I'd say something clever, just so I can watch you roll your eyes and hear your soft, amused chuckle. We'd have long conversations about things that mattered in your sphere – hunger, and justice, and beauty – and I'd eventually take you home. We'd stand at your front door, and the world from both within and without the thin, tearing veil would fade into insignificance.

And when I wake up from my self-imposed hallucinations, I almost always take a deep, painful breath. Then another, and another, until the urge to carve the frantic, racing piece of muscle from my chest and offer it to the Dark Lord had subsided. Perhaps he could rid it of the miserable desperation that has become its very reason for beating these days.

—-

**Author's Note****:** More to come, I suspect. I have fallen into an old addiction. I love it, though I am slightly ashamed of how seemingly childish it appears. I really should stop caring what other people think of this side of me but, oh, it adds to the proverbial suffering, and what was it they say about an artist's sacrifices for her art?


	2. Chapter 1: The North Tower

_I was naive to have clung so tightly to the names and titles that I thought defined everything around me. Pureblood, mudblood, traitor, master, murderer, Death Eater, madman, good, evil… What did any of it mean in the end? They were just words. No face, no soul, no heart. Not even twisted reason. They were just fucking words that people foolishly died for._

_Who we are—Haha!_

_My name is Draco Malfoy, and I was a prodigy, manufactured by carefully cast conception spells and several generations of near-inbreeding between the purest magical lines in all of Europe. I am a man, because my mother was bound by her marriage contract to produce a Black-Malfoy heir, and so ensured, with wand and potion, that she held up her end of the bargain at the very first attempt. Before I was barely even a bundle of cells, growing deftly within her womb, she had guaranteed both my gender and my role in the traditional clusterfuck that was our lives. I am a wizard because I would have been drowned or, if my father was feeling particularly cruel that day, abandoned in a Muggle settlement and forgotten, should the test for magical energy – an ancient but fairly simple spell performed as soon as a child is born from two pure-blood parents – prove me a useless squib. I would have been pawned off to our long estranged and never-mentioned Muggle relatives, much like Saint Potter was, another shameful secret obliviated from the memories of all involved, including the witch and wizard who dared bear a non-magical abomination._

_Sometimes, I obsess about those possibilities. What if I had been born without an ounce of magic in my oh-so-pure veins? I clutch two specific scenarios, refusing all others: I would have been found eventually, cared for, loved. That, or I would have died in the ice-ridden Highlands, frozen solid, untouched. The Dark Lord would have been a vague idea, lodged somewhere in my subconscious, real only in my nightmares. Hogwarts would not exist. There would be no blaring mark on my forearm, no Lucius Malfoy, no Azkaban, no Hermione Granger. There would only be me and my happy, innocent existence._

_But even as I lose myself in the idea, I find that piece of dense flesh – heavy and demanding – clenching under my sternum, aching at the thought of a world without her. The absence feels severe, a sharp emptiness that makes me shake my head until the fantasy-turned-nightmare slithers from my mind, momentarily forgotten._

**Sixth Year**

He saw her for the first time that year. Not the same girl he had been taunting since they were children but a woman whose fierce brown eyes spoke of the rewards of loyalty, the demands of true purity, the price of intelligence. She had grown – superimposed, even – into more than crazy hair, and dirty blood, and delicate pink flesh. Godfuck she drove him to distraction without even a single conscious effort.

Their initial encounter was brief. He had been pushed into yet another frenzy by the mere sight of the dark mark on his flesh and, fighting the urge to scream – or worse, fall into hysterics – he found himself walking out of his own chamber, long strides carrying him to a yet unnamed location. Anywhere, please, please, he could hear his own desperation screaming in his ears, and it wasn't until he passed Sir Cardogan that he realized his aimless escape had led him to the North Tower. The idea of an encounter with Sybil Trelawney had him running towards the only other room he felt safe enough to hide in until he could regain at least a small semblance of composure.

He almost fell into the Room of Runes, his weight swinging the door wide open, right hand wrapped desperately around the handle. His legs had been protesting, shaking as the inexplicable panic gripped his spine and spread far, far into his fingers, his lips, his lungs. His stomach was spasming and it took him a moment to realize that the room's sole occupant, a girl – the girl, in fact – had been standing by the west wall's large, open window. Her brown hair rode the whispering wind in dramatic rivulets around her face, defying the plain, black ribbon she had used to tie the mess of soft strands at the base of her head. They stared at one another for long seconds, a moment long enough for him to note later that tears streaked her cheeks and she looked…Well, he didn't quite know how to interpret her expression. She seemed almost afraid of him. Of course, that couldn't have been correct. Afterall, when had Hermione Granger ever shown fear?

She gasped, as if she had just woken from a trance. Then, without looking at him again, she swept from the room, leaving nothing but the scent of night-blooming jasmine in her wake. He couldn't understand then why, after taking his first deep breath in what felt like hours, he suddenly found the peace he didn't realize he had been begging for.


End file.
